AUSTRALIANS AT WAR

THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY is a compelling factual history of neoconservatism and its influence on US Foreign Policy in the Middle East during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Click on image above for details.

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Commenting on the UNs decision to press ahead in bringing the perpetrators of the assassination of Lebanon’s ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri to justice, the US Ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, said: “By adopting this resolution, the council has demonstrated its commitment to the principle that there shall be no impunity for political assassinations in Lebanon or elsewhere”.

So we can expect those that were responsible for the political assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin the spiritual leader of Hamas in a targeted killing in March 2004 to soon be brought to justice as well? And, of course, we can expect to see in the courts fairly soon those that have been responsible for all the other political leaders that Israel has assassinated in targeted killings in the Gaza and West Bank of late.

Monday, May 28, 2007

The label ‘Al Qaeda’ has been used, or rather abused, ever since 11 September 2001 when the finger of blame for that terrifying day was pointed at bin Laden and his ‘al Qaeda’ organisation. Indeed, according to George Tenet in his book, At the center of the storm: My years at the CIA, bin Laden was blamed for the attacks by at least three-thirty in the afternoon of 11 September 2001.[1]

Ever since 11 September 2001 bin Laden and/or al Qaeda have been used as an excuse for nigh on every attack that the US and the Israelis have made on Islamic peoples and their nations. An alleged relationship between Saddam Hussein and ‘al Qaeda’ was used as the casus belli for the US and its allies to invade Iraq. Dick Cheney even asserted that Saddam Hussein, with al Qaeda, was responsible for the events of 11 September 2001. But it turned out that there was no such connection at all.

As the insurgency against the occupiers in Iraq gained momentum and US and allied casualties began to mount, so the blame for the increased resistance was placed on ‘al Qaeda in Iraq’ and all those that resisted the occupation were labelled ‘terrorists’. The hate figure devised by the allies to perpetuate the propaganda myth of ‘al Qaeda in Iraq’ was ‘Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’. He gave something that young and gullible US and allied troops could go after. And when he was supposedly ‘killed’ in June 2006 there was much propaganda fanfare and mileage gained from his ‘death’ which was hailed as a ‘great victory’ against al Qaeda.

The ‘great victory’ was short-lived however, and a new hate figure, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, previously Zarqawi’s number two in Iraq, was quickly promoted before people started to believe that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s death may actually have signalled the end of the ‘war against terrorism’. It had been reported that he too had also been killed, not by allied forces but by Sunni insurgents in factional fighting, though this has not been confirmed by the US authorities in Iraq.

For some time Mossad, the Israeli intelligence organisation, have tried to plant stooges in the Gaza and West Bank among Palestinians who have tried to pass themselves off as ‘al Qaeda’. The Israelis have failed miserably in their attempts at this. For one thing, the Gaza resistance community is a very tight knit one where everyone just about knows everyone and strangers are very quickly pointed out. The same applies in the West Bank. Of late, however, the Israelis and the US have taken a new tack playing on the friction that has evolved between Hamas and Fatah. Despite the fact that Hamas was popularly elected to govern the Palestinian peoples the Israelis have constantly thwarted Hamas’ ability to so do and have attempted, almost successfully, to polarise the two groups and Palestinians. The US has been active in playing off one against the other by supplying arms to Hamas’ opposition, Fatah.

Meanwhile, in Lebanon, the same US officials responsible for working with the Israelis to undermine Hamas have also been arming and supplying a Sunni Palestinian refugee group in an effort to wedge the influence of the Shia Hizbollah predominate in southern Lebanon. The problem here is that the arrangements have backfired on the US. The group, known as Fatah al-Islam, has taken on an aggressive role against the Lebanese government. The western propaganda machine is trying to say that the Fatah al-Islam group are an ‘al Qaeda inspired’ group. In fact they are more like an ‘Elliot Abrams inspired’ group. The US is now desperately flying in big weapons to deal with this tiny group – which brings us to the next anomaly in this saga.

The group are said to be only five hundred strong at most, probably nearer three hundred, yet the US are going to a huge amount of effort to airlift a lot of weapons for the Lebanese government army. This is more than just a hammer to crack a nut. It’s more like a 300 tonne hydraulic press to squash a pea; unless, of course, the US knows something that the Lebanese don’t.

In raising the ante in Iraq, Lebanon, the West Bank and the Gaza by again raising the empty spectre of ‘al Qaeda’ in order to get at Iran, Syria and Hizbollah, the US and the Israelis have exposed their hand about the myth of ‘al Qaeda terrorism’ in the Middle East.

ENDNOTES[1] George Tenet, At the center of the storm: My years at the CIA. (New York: Harper-Collins, 2007.) p. 169.

Friday, May 25, 2007

There’s a paragraph in George Tenet’s book, At the center of the storm: My years at the CIA, which confirms that the US planned to invade Afghanistan before 11 September 2001. It goes like this:

“At eight-thirty that evening [11 September 2001], speaking from the Oval Office, the president addressed the nation in terms both stirring and deeply earnest, including the first enunciation of what became known as the Bush Doctrine. “I’ve directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and bring them to justice”, he told a global audience of some eighty million people. “We will make no distinction between the terrorists that committed these acts and those who harbor them.” For us at CIA, the new doctrine meant that restraints were finally off. We already had on our shelves the game plan for going after al Qa’ida and its protectors, the Taliban, in Afghanistan .Now we could begin to implement it. Amid the sorrow of the day, we realised that we were finally going to be given the authorisation and the resources to do the job we knew had to be done.”[1] (My italics for emphasis.)

As if we didn’t already know! This, however, is primary evidence.

ENDNOTE[1] George Tenet, At the center of the storm: My years at the CIA. (New York: Harper-Collins, 2007.) p. 170-171.

Israel by arresting some thirty of Hamas’ senior members in the West Bank is making a concerted effort to destroy Hamas and thus bring the Palestinian people to their knees. At the same time the US is trying desperately hard to intimidate Iran. And also at the same time the IAEA has released a report about Iran’s nuclear program that the US is going to pounce on despite the conciliatory tone regarding nuclear weapons generally (a tone incidentally that seems to have infuriated the US, Israel and their allies).If one steps back a bit and takes a look at these events collectively one can see a bigger picture emerging – and it’s not one that bodes well for the people of the Middle East. The whole kit and caboodle is teetering on the edge of disaster.A rift seems to be developing between the major players in the US/Israel hierarchy. On the one side are those who want to follow the President Bush path who would like to see Israel get what it wants by diplomacy and negotiation, and on the other side there are those who are less patient that want to follow the Vice-President Cheney path that prefer to see Israel get what it wants by war, starting with Iran. All of them are hawks but it seems that some are more hawkish than others and, if push comes to shove, it wouldn’t be too difficult to see the Bush team go over to Cheney thinking with Iran ending up getting attacked, followed up by an all-out assault by the Israelis on the Gaza, West Bank, Syria – if they don’t capitulate first – and Hizbollah in south Lebanon. What could happen beyond that scenario is anybody’s guess.Suffice to say that whatever way it goes many more people will lose their lives and even more will lose their homes and country.And all because the extreme right-wing Zionists of Israel and their supporters want to see a Greater Israel.

To most people who are familiar with Abrams history this assertion will not come as any surprise; his role in the notorious Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s is well known. Abrams is well versed in the art of playing off one set of peoples against another in order to achieve an outcome that ultimately is not in the interests of either but only in the interests of the US and/or Israel. This current situation among Palestinians is no exception.

...AND FOLLOWING UP ON THIS IS THE INEVITABLE AL QAEDA CONNECTION – NEVER FAR AWAY FROM ANYTHING ABRAMS GETS INVOLVED IN!!

The Israeli and US propaganda machine is waking up to the fact that the peoples of the world are themselves waking up to the fact that most of the stuff that comes out of the right-wing mainstream media of Israel and the US is, indeed, just propaganda.

The Fatah al-Islam mob in Lebanon that have been covertly financed and supplied by the US for example are only being touted as ‘al Qaeda inspired’ rather than ‘al Qaeda in Lebanon’ or some other such nonsense. (They are actually ‘Elliot Abrams inspired’.)

It is also becoming quite clear that al Qaeda has nothing to do with any of the violence that is currently going in Iraq, and that it never has had, despite Bush’s recent announcement releasing ‘evidence’ to show bin Laden had started up al Qaeda in Iraq using the ‘late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’ to set up the Iraqi branch office of al Qaeda in Iraq.

There is, of course, no actual ‘evidence’ shown. There’s just Bush reading his notes telling the world another load of garbage and then expecting this to be accepted as ‘evidence’. He hasn’t quite woken up yet to the fact that most people on this planet simply don’t believe him or anything his administration says anymore.

Meanwhile the warmongers are upping the ante off Iran today with the arrival of some 17,000 marines on the USS Bonhomme Richard assault ship that has recently arrived in the Gulf for ‘exercises’.

Monday, May 21, 2007

One would have to wonder how the West would react if the Palestinians found a way of making successful ‘targeted killings’ of Israeli political and military leaders and their soldiers. Imagine if you will that Palestinians suddenly had in their possession an arsenal of incredibly accurate remotely controlled flying bombs that could roam the skies over Israel with impunity and that could strike down say Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni or Defence Minister Amir Peretz at will. There would be absolute outrage throughout the world. There would be a demand that such activities ceased forthwith and, furthermore, that those responsible be brought to justice.

Yet when Israel carries out targeted killings against Palestinians there is hardly a peep of outrage from the West. When Sheik Ahmed Yassin the spiritual leader of Hamas was assassinated in a targeted killing in March 2004, there was barely a ripple of outrage despite the fact the he was blind, wheelchair-bound and 67 years old. And we learn now that the Israeli cabinet has given the OK for the IDF to assassinate Hamas politicians.

This is state terrorism of the very worst kind. The world should be outraged. Hamas was elected by the Palestinian people to represent them. Now they are being targeted for assassination – and given the well-known reputation of IDF efficiency, this amounts to nothing less than the summary execution of democratically elected national leaders. Yet still the world remains silent. Have the peoples of the entire Western world been brought to their knees by fear and paranoia?

When are the peoples of the world going to denounce these crimes and demand that the perpetrators be brought to the International Criminal Courts charged with warcrimes?

TWO CONTRASTING HA’ARETZ ARTICLES PUBLISHED TODAY HIGHLIGHT HOW THE ISRAELI MEDIA DIFFERENTLY VIEW THEIR FELLOW HUMANS.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Making headlines in Rupert Murdoch’s propaganda spreadsheet, ‘The Australian’, today is this piece of totally unsubstantiated garbage from Alexander Downer and Australia’s security and intelligence organisation (ASIO) that blares; ‘Islamists being starved of funds’.

The piece opens by telling readers: “Islamic extremists in Australia are being starved of money by an unprecedented crackdown on the secret flow of funds from Saudi Arabia.”

The first question one needs to ask is: ‘What Islamic extremists in Australia?’ Where is the evidence that these people actually exist. Are Australians expected to believe anything and everything that they are told by ‘the government’? There seems to be the automatic assumption that Australian’s will believe anything the government and their agencies tell them. This is despite the fact that these are exactly the same people who told Australians that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. They are exactly the same people that told Australians that Saddam Hussein was a direct threat to Australia. These are the same people who told us that Saddam Hussein supported bin Laden and the events of 9/11. This is also the same Alexander Downer that insisted that trucks found in Iraq after the invasion were mobile chemical or biological weapons factory. This liar even continued to insist these trucks were mobile chemical or biological weapons factory long after they were revealed to be nothing more than mobile hydrogen generators used to inflate weather balloons and artillery ranging balloons. Now we are expected to accept without question his assertion that there are ‘Islamic extremists in Australia’.

As we read on, however, readers discover that Downer and ASIO aren’t actually discussing ‘terrorists’ per se but ‘Islamic extremists’ though, of course, the mention of Jamaah Islamiah and the Bali bombings are somehow woven into the story as an example, again totally unsubstantiated, of how Saudi funds have ‘bankrolled’ Indonesian ‘terror groups’. The propaganda connection is thus made.

The actual intent of this story is to demonise Islam by invoking the fear of Islamic extremism by relating it to ‘terrorism’. The reality is that Islamic extremism does not automatically infer ‘terrorism’ any more than Christian or Judaism extremists automatically infer ‘terrorism’.

In fact we learn that the money was not for use by terrorists at all but was to be used for the construction of two mosques; one at Belmore in Sydney and the other at Park Holme in Adelaide. ASIO it seems was opposed to Saudi funds being used for the construction of these mosques on the grounds that Wahabism, a form of Islamic fundamentalism practiced predominately in Saudi Arabia may be taught there.

All of this really has absolutely nothing to do with ‘terrorism’ in any way shape or form but has absolutely everything to do with the Australian government and its agencies extreme right-wing racism against what they consider to be ‘non-Australian’ religions and cultures.

Sunni men are being randomly and clandestinely rounded up by covert squads of Iraqi police under the command of US and Israeli mercenaries, taken away and ‘interrogated’ for any information they can glean about the predominately Sunni insurgency against US occupation, and are then taken away to be executed and dumped.

The motivation of the perpetrators of these disgusting crimes is threefold. Firstly, there is the strong possibility that among any number of Sunni men that they do pick up there will be some that actually are insurgents and from these some intelligence may be gained. Second, in executing their captives they are inevitably ridding themselves of those that they see as their enemies. And finally of course, there is both the deterrence and the fear factor.

Executing captured insurgents is nothing new. Indeed, it was alleged that US-sponsored interim Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, personally executed some six captured insurgents at a Baghdad police station in July of 2004. Now the monthly body counts of tortured and executed Sunnis has become even more outrageous with some 234 bodies dumped around Baghdad in the first 11 days of May this year alone and that’s just the ones that have been found.

If the Americans and their allies left Iraq tomorrow the cycle of inter-Iraqi sectarian violence would have no reason to continue. It is the Americans that are pitting Sunnis against Shiites in the classic colonial game of divide and rule, but with the Americans gone the two factions will have no choice but to join forces in order to rebuild their shattered nation. The alternative is complete annihilation as a nation – something neither side really want or can afford to risk. To continue fighting would be pointless since, at the moment, there is nothing actually left to fight over and there will be even less when the Americans leave.

Which, of course, is why the US and their allies are quite happy to see and, indeed, encourage, the two sides to continue killing each other.

Monday, May 14, 2007

Rupert Murdoch’s The Australianreckons: “Australian mufti Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali is under investigation over whether his call for the Muslim world to unite behind Iran breached sedition laws by urging assistance to an enemy of the state.”

Since when has Iran been ‘an enemy of the state’?

The Australian goes on to tell us: “Australian Federal Police officers interviewed Sheik Hilali last Tuesday over his call to Muslims to ‘stand in the trenches’ with Iran, described by US President George W. Bush as a member of the ‘axis of evil’.”

Why do we need to be reminded that George W. Bush has called Iran part of the ‘axis of evil’? Just because George W. Bush, President of the United States – not President of Australia – calls Iran part of the ‘axis of evil’ doesn’t make it so.

There is no sedition here; only a very crude attempt by the AFP and the Howard government to demonise al-Hilali specifically and Islam generally. The mufti al-Hilali says some outrageous stuff occasionally but for newspapers like the right-wing Murdoch-owned The Australian to report these things the way it does, blowing the importance of what al-Hilali says out of all proportion is pure and deliberate racist propaganda against the religion and culture of Islam.

One may not agree with what al-Hilali has to say but he has the right in Australia to say it and, while Iran and their leaders might get up John Howard’s nose, (as, no doubt, he gets up theirs) we are not at war with them and we are certainly not at war with their people.

Iran is not an enemy of the state of Australia – regardless of what Bush or his deputy sheriff John Howard might like to think.

Sedition indeed!!! More like Howard’s last fling towards fascism in Australia.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

It seems Australian Prime Minister John Howard may not only lose government to Kevin Rudd and the Labor party at the next election but may lose his own seat as well. A poll out today has it that Maxine McKew, an ex-current affairs and popular ABC TV host, standing for Labor in Howard’s seat of Bennelong in Sydney, would easily have unseated Howard had an election been held this weekend.

So where does this leave Howard? His ego won’t allow him to lose and the poll margin of 4% (representing a 6% swing to Labor in a seat that only requires a 4% swing for Labour to win) has McKew in front enough that even if the Liberal Party political fortunes were to generally change in their favour by the time of the next election, it more than likely would not change quite enough to save Howard’s own seat. McKew, not taking anything for granted, and despite the figures, reckons it will still take a ‘miracle’ to unseat the Prime Minister despite the polls verdict suggesting otherwise. But the question is; will Prime Minister Howard be willing to risk the ignominy of losing his own seat to Labor? And, of course, the worst case scenario for Howard would be for his government to retain power but for Howard himself to lose his own seat.

Howard has a deep, though somewhat warped and misguided, sense of Australian history; a history that he sees himself being a part of. However, a sitting Prime Minister losing his own seat, despite the fact that it wouldn’t be the first time, is not the kind of history that Howard would want to be remembered for.

It is these poll results, and the fact that the election is now only months away, that has now put Howard in somewhat of a predicament. He has repeatedly told the Australian people that he would not step down from the leadership while the Liberal party still wanted him to be leader. Next in line for the Liberal Party leadership is Treasurer Peter Costello. Problem is Costello leading the Liberal party into the next election would ensure disaster for the Liberal party. For the Liberal party and conservatives everywhere Costello has all the credentials required to be leader except one – he has negative charisma, which is even worse than having no charisma at all. The Liberal Party are very much aware of this and, besides, would hardly be wanting to change horses at this late stage even if Costello did have what it takes. Perhaps Howard should have handed over the reigns of power to Costello when he had the opportunity because now is too late – at least for the Liberal Party it is.

On the other hand Howard may see the writing on the wall for the Liberal government anyway, and not to mention his own seat, and decide to walk away from the leadership on the some other grounds like health and/or age/leadership burnout or whatever – anything to avoid the embarrassment of losing government and ones own seat at the same time.

Whatever happens at the next election, Howard is unlikely to remain Prime Minister. If his demise comes about by losing both government and his own seat than what better way could history take revenge on such a monumental liar as ‘Honest John’ Howard? And if he chooses to walk away from the leadership prior to the election then it would both ensure a Labor win and, at the same time, expose Howard for the transparent deceiver that he is.

Whatever Howard does he can rest assured that history will not treat him the way he imagines it would be. One can only hope that he lives long enough for him to witness how history will treat him. For him no punishment for his warmongering and inhumanity while he was in power could be worse.

Friday, May 11, 2007

The highest ranking neoconservative serving in the Bush administration, Vice-President Dick Cheney, recently visited Iraq to tell the troops that the Global War on Terrorism continues. In his latest piece of Grand Chutzpah Cheney reckons, “We’re fighting a war against terror. We are here, above all, because the terrorists who have declared war on America and other free nations have made Iraq the central front in that war.”

It hasn’t occurred to this delusional megalomanic lunatic that the only ‘terrorists’ in Iraq are the US occupiers and their allies and that those that are fighting back are the resistance that don’t want the US there. He seems to forget that it was the US that declared war on the Iraqi people; not the other way round as he states. Furthermore, the Iraqi people never declared war on America – not even Saddam Hussein declared war on America. It was Bush, Cheney and their neoconservative pro right-wing Zionist cronies that declared war on Islam when they conspired, as it is increasingly seems, to bring down the World Trade Centre and blame it on Islamic extremists.

Cheney’s efforts to perpetuate the myth of a global al Qaeda terrorist organisation with Osama bin Laden at its head is now beginning to crumble. The government story of the events of 9/11 is coming apart at the seams as it becomes increasingly obvious that the government are unable to answer basic questions about what happened that day. It won’t be too long now before the entire neocon con unravels entirely.

MEANWHILE IN OZ…The Cheney supporting, warmongering neocon Aussie commentator, Greg Sheridan, from Murdoch’s propaganda rag The Australian, had this to say about Britains Tony Blair in a piece that he had the temerity to title (and I jest not) ‘The world was lucky to have Tony Blair’: “Tony Blair was the greatest statesman in Western civilisation in the past 10 years and the world will sorely miss his leadership.” Sheridan should try telling that to the relatives and friends of the 655,000 Iraqis that have died since he, Bush and Australian Prime Minister John ‘Deputy Sheriff’ Howard decided to invade, occupy and plunder Iraq and Afghanistan.

One wonders also if the relatives and friends of the 148 or so British military personnel that have died so far in Iraq will be as convinced as Sheridan that Blair’s leadership will be missed.

Sunday, May 06, 2007

Olmert has come out with a rather intriguing statement. He said yesterday: “It doesn't matter how many people came to the square, because decisions are made in the Knesset and not in demonstrations, because we are not a banana republic. And anyway, public opinion will soon flip in our favour.”

Well, so much for ‘democracy’, but it’s that last sentence which is the real problem. One has to wonder what is going to happen to cause ‘public opinion to flip’. It’s at such a low ebb at the moment that it’s going to need something big to flip it. And what does he mean by ‘soon’?

One can rest assured that, if it has anything to do with Israeli foreign policy that is going to make Israel better off, then it will be at the expense of one of its neighbours.

Hopefully he’s just bluffing and that no one will end up dead just so that ‘public opinion will soon flip in his favour’. But somehow I don’t think so

Friday, May 04, 2007

The so-called ‘Green’ debate is much more than a simple ‘Left’ or ‘Right’ position on the ‘climate change’ argument.

Incorporated within the debate are a whole range of issues that need to be discussed, not least of which are the planets energy needs for now and in the future, and at the core of the debate is how and to what extent those energy needs are likely to effect climate change on our planet.

There are, however, certain realities that we need to be aware of regardless of the argument about ‘climate change’. Reality number one is, of course, that the current major energy resource that the world uses, oil/gas/fossil, is a finite resource and that as such, it will eventually be exhausted regardless of whether its use as an energy resource contributes to ‘climate change’ or not. This brings us to reality number two and that is making decisions about the alternative energy resources once the existing oil/gas/fossil resource is exhausted.

Essentially there are only two alternatives; human derived nuclear energy (uranium sourced) and naturally derived nuclear energy (solar sourced). Uranium derived nuclear energy has its own special problems not least of which is sourcing it, making it into a usable fuel and then disposing of a highly dangerous waste. Solar derived nuclear energy only has one problem and that is how to convert it in to usable energy in such abundance that it is cost effective.

The uranium sourced nuclear energy cycle option is vast, expensive and complex. The uranium itself needs to be mined from massively expensive mining operations and then processed and refined into a useable fuel, which is also a massively expensive operation, which, in turn, can then be used in a nuclear reactor, another very expensive item of which more than one will be required. Finally the very dangerous waste product from the reactor then needs to be disposed of which is yet another massively expensive operation. Meanwhile, there is always the risk of a Chernobyl-like disaster and also the risk that some nations that have nuclear energy facilities may also want to extend their nuclear capabilities and facilities to include the manufacture of nuclear weapons whether overtly or covertly.

The solar sourced nuclear energy cycle option has many advantages over the human sourced nuclear energy cycle, the most obvious of which is the fact that the actual energy source itself is free and readily available. It does not need to be dug up in order to access it and it does not to be buried in order to dispose of the waste once used – indeed, there is no waste. The real problem with solar energy is that we have not yet devoted enough time and financial resources into developing it into a viability that would make it available en mass at a competitive price. The problem of converting solar energy into usable energy, however, can easily be resolved if governments and industry are prepared to make the necessary financial commitments to further research and advance the development of the relatively new technologies related to solar energy particularly in the areas of wind turbines and photo-voltaic cells. Breakthroughs in these technologies, particularly in relation to cost, could also bring to fruition the abundant water fresh water supplies needed for dry nations via seawater desalinisation, another technology that needs more research and development in order to produce mass benefits for all.

The ‘climate change’ debate is not really a political one. Politicians are, well… politicians; they’re not scientists. The ‘climate change’ debate will be resolved when the scientists have finished their work. But, whatever the outcome, one thing is for dead sure; our present major fuel (oil/gas/fossil) sources are finite. We will run out of it sooner or later. The uranium sourced energy is too risky and besides, even that will also run out sooner or later as well.

The solar energy road will eventually be the only alternative for mankind. We might as well get on that road sooner rather than later because ‘later’ might just be too late – especially if ‘climate change’ is man-made. And, if it isn’t, then we’ve lost nothing. Future generations will thank us for thinking of them rather than curse us for having used the present energy systems to simply fuel our greed for today without consideration of them.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT…Bush is continually telling the world that what ‘they’ hate about ‘us’ is our values. And as an example of just one of the values that ‘they’ hate about ‘us’, hypocrisy, Bush lays it on the line with this gem recently when discussing legislation regarding abortion: He will not “…allow taxpayer dollars to be used for the destruction of human life”. He should try telling that to the relatives of the 655,000 odd human lives that taxpayers dollars have destroyed in Iraq since 2003.

The bottom line is; it’s not looking at all good for Olmert. What he needs now is a major distraction, one that’ll make him look good and turn around his bad fortune. Unfortunately, the only kind of events that would be that distractive is ones that will involve strikes against those he sees are their enemies. For one Arab MK, Mohammad Baraka, that could well mean an attack against the Gaza Strip. Such a move, however, would be in the circumstances too transparent for even Olmert to consider; on the other hand though, desperate people can do desperate things and such a move should not be ruled out entirely.

Meanwhile, one opposition leader is very much conspicuous by simple virtue of having said next to nothing since the Winograd report was released. Netanyahu is just itching to for an election and another chance at power where he thinks he can put paid to what he believes is Israel’s arch enemy, Iran, using his close relationship with Vice-President Dick Cheney to help achieve his objective. The consequences of the Netanyahu scenario becoming a reality could be frightening. But then, whatever happens over the next few weeks could be frightening enough for the Palestinian people regardless.

AND IN NEWS JUST TO HAND…It seems that Tzipi Livni, the influential Israeli Foreign Minister in Olmert’s government and Kadima party leader wannabe will be asking Olmert to resign and in doing so could well be setting herself up as the next Prime Minister.

In some ways a Livni led Israeli government could be more of a disaster for the Palestinians than a Netanyahu led government. Livni would endorse the Olmert approach of a ‘Bantustan’ style future for the Palestinians where they would live a fragmented and apartheid-type life forever dominated by the Israelis in a diminished and controlled state which Livni and her counterpart in the Bush administration, Condoleeza Rice, have agreed would be the way to go to solve the ‘problem’.

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is an Aeronautical Engineer, Historian and general carer of what goes on in the world.
Apart from an earlier career in engineering, Lataan also has a First Class Honours BA degree in History and a PhD in International Politics.
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